For any online store, the success majorly depends on how well your products are being sold to your customers. As e-commerce is a fiercely competitive space to sell products or services, winning the trust and loyalty of your site visitors need to be of priority.
As a well branded e-commerce store is important, the functionality of the platform with regards to the processing of the payments is key. The choice of the payment gateway is essential in giving assurance to site visitors about your trustworthiness. Other factors to help build your trust would include website security.
With an internet penetration of more than 49%, that means more than half of the population are active internet users in Tanzania, and due to which GDP is rising with a growth rate of 4% approx by the year 2022.
A payment gateway is an e-commerce service that essentially allows merchants to accept credit card and other forms of Internet transactions securely via your website. Local mobile payment methods like Mpesa, tiGo Pesa, Airtel money are widely used by the people of Tanzania along with the credit & debit card payments.
What to Consider When Choosing Payment Gateway
Of all the payment gateways available at your disposal for your e-store, the baseline is they all don’t function in the same manner as much as the conversion is on making sales. There it is mandatory to make the right choice.
Consider these factors while figuring out which payment gateway to use
- Check out the transition fees associated with setting up the payment gateway. Make sure it’s within your budget.
- Evaluate the local currencies that could be processed with the payment gateway. With Mpesa and Airtel money the better.
- In order to know what products either digital or physical you sell, check out the terms and conditions of the payment gateways. Since some platforms may only allow selling physical goods.
- Evaluate whether the payment gateway requires you to go through a sign-up process. If yes, then it’s better to avoid such payment gateways.
- The basic payment gateway should accept credit card, debit card and PayPal payments.
For a global expansion of the business, look out for a payment gateway that comes with multi-currency support. - Unnecessary filling out of forms during the purchase process always makes it appear to be tiresome as you would wish to have it short for conversion.
- We’ve compiled a list of recommended payment gateways among which you can choose one that best suits your needs.
Top 3 Recommended E-commerce Payment Gateways in Tanzania
1. Direct Pay Online
Direct Pay Online has been in business for 15 years and was founded in 1999. As a payment service provider (PSP), Direct Pay Online has developed the technology to enable businesses and individuals across the continent to make payments online and offline with all currencies and payment methods, including major cards, mobile money and e-wallets.
DPO Group has made a series of strategic acquisitions and developed a sophisticated end-to-end fraud prevention system and holds PCI DSS Level 1 Certification, the highest level of certification as set out by the industry standards, in each of the countries in which it operates.
2. PesaPal
Pesapal is also a recommended payment gateway that offers online shopping carts, accepts mobile payments, and so on. With Pesapal wallet merchants are able to receive payments from mobile money cards together with select mobile banking accounts.
In order to process credit card payments, you will first have to sign up as a user on Pesapal. For platforms that use WordPress, Magento, Shopify and WHMCS as the content managing system a plugin is provided to help with the setting up.
3. Paypal
PayPal is one of the most widely-used payment gateways that accepts both credit card or debit card payments. It’s free to use for buyers. However, store owners will have to pay a simple transition fee of 3.4% + $0.30 USD?, when using PayPal for credit card payments.
The best part is that you only need to pay after making a sale. This payment gateway does not require any setup fees, gateway fees, or monthly fees. Around 341,497 Internet sites use PayPal payment gateway.
Conclusion
Don’t let payment gateways act as a roadblock to setting up a successful online business, make sure to choose the suitable option for your online store.
However, it’s too easy to become overwhelmed by choosing a payment gateway. Hopefully, reading this post will give you a good idea of the best payment gateways to choose from, for your e-store.
